I think I might be an asshole

I think I may have had an epiphany. It seems that many of the Nerd Queen Goddess' (NQG) friends thought I was bad for her, or just straight up didn't like me. I always thought I was a nice guy, who was good to her, and whenever I'd hear about someone telling her we were bad for each other, I never thought too much about why that was, and more likely became angry at said person for crushing on my girlfriend. I've gone through quite the period of emotional turmoil over the last several weeks, in wake of my decision to cut the cord with such a wonderful human being because of my inability to tolerate the distance from Cville to Bmore anymore, and my inability to commit to the extent that would be required to get her to come down here. Fear, sadness, intense random sadness, longing, more sadness... Well, now I think its appropriate for some moments of introspection, and that includes why so many of her friends thought we were bad for each other.

I went to one of our mutual friends, and posed this question to her: If so many of her friends thought the same thing, what is it that I was doing that made them feel that way? The words cold and demeaning were within the first couple lines of the answer. I think insensitive may have been a more appropriate word than demeaning; that was a not exactly heart lifting suggestion from another mutual friend, indicating this was obvious to more than just a few outliers. Something about my interaction with NQG and probably to differing extents, all of my friends, is insensitive enough to create this perception in many observers. This for me is a bit of a nightmare, I'm someone who can be paralyzed by worry over what others think of me, but I think this may be inherent to the problem. I am beginning to think that I probably do not spend enough effort truly trying to consider the feelings of the people I interact with. Many times I worry about how they feel about me, or how my actions will make them feel ABOUT me, but rarely do I purely consider them and their feelings in the absence of my own context.

In any case, I think I may have been a bad boyfriend. And this hurts me because I still care very deeply about her, in fact I still very much love her and it tears me up that I may have been worse to her than I thought. I cannot change that at this point, but I guess what I can change is to try to follow the golden rule a little better, in fact probably try to do one better than the golden rule, since maybe part of my insensitivity may be that I have a fairly thick skin regarding things being done to me, and what may seem to me to be a joke that I wouldn't mind terribly receiving, could be hurtful to someone else with differing sensibilities. I hate my rambling writing. I don't know if I reached any conclusions here other than I continue to dislike myself, perhaps more now, and I have a hard time not worrying about other people's opinions of me, perhaps to the detriment of my consideration of their feelings absent my own desire to be liked. Oy.

Song: Red Hot Chili Peppers, Soul to Squeeze

Goal: Write something useful, stop being an asshole to people you care about.